Process of Change
by chutzpah
Summary: A relationship in fifty sentences.


Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I'm not making any financial/material profit from this piece of fanfiction, and no infringement is intended. In other words, please don't sue.

Notes: this was written for the 1sentence community on livejournal: http/1sentence. Change 

1. Ring

Buffy never wears the claddagh ring anymore, but it still sits there in her drawer, as if waiting for something.

2. Hero

"I think you're tired of always being the hero," Faith says, and she's sitting too close for comfort, close enough that Buffy can smell the cigarette smoke in her hair and Faith says, "That's why you fell."

3. Memory

Buffy tries not to remember.

4. Box

Instead of becoming clearer under the harsh light of growing older, Buffy finds that the lines between adversary and ally have become even more blurred, and she's not sure that she can find it in herself to care.

5. Run

Faith follows her to Italy, knocks on her door one morning and says: "Stop running away, B."

6. Hurricane

Faith is like a summer storm, a hurricane, and her mouth on Buffy's is hot and tastes nothing like strawberries and everything likeforgetting.

7. Wings

"Even Angel fell," Faith tells her, tangling her fingers in Buffy's blonde hair.

8. Cold

Faith's skin is warm but it does nothing for Buffy, who remembers colder skin against her own.

9. Red

She remembers Faith scrubbing the blood out of her shirt, red blood and the water turning pinkish, and wishing that it were that easy.

10. Drink

Buffy envies Faith her ability to carry her guilt, to still stand tall underneath its burden, and then she takes another shot of whisky and remembers drinking it before, somewhere else, with someone else.

11. Midnight

She tries not to remember, but midnight is the worst hour for it, the time when all her secrets and all her shame comes weighing down on her like a landslide, or like the rocks that buried Spike as he burnt.

12. Temptation

Buffy is no innocent Eve, but she thinks that Faith could be the serpent, and instead of knowledge it's forgiveness that she offers.

13. View

Sometimes she looks out of the window at the unfamiliar country and she wonders where Dawn is, if she's still staying with Xander, if she's happy.

14. Music

Angel listened to classical, Spike listened to old rock and punk, and Faith just listens to anything on the radio at all, turning it up until the floors vibrate and Buffy can feel the rhythm rattling its way through her bones.

15. Silk

"You need to learn how to give up control," Faith says, winding one of the silk scarves around Buffy's wrist and binding it to the bedpost.

16. Cover

Buffy watches her and thinks that she's learnt this lesson before, just forgotten it, but she hides that thought well and meets Faith's gaze with heavylidded eyes.

17. Promise

"You don't have to go back, not if you don't want to."

18. Dream

Buffy dreams about being young again, when she had friends and a Watcher, and a resolution that was her sword and shield against the things that went bump in the night.

19. Candle

She wakes up sweating, thinking that she's lost that now, all of it, and she lights a candle to keep the shadows flickering at the corners of the room where they belong.

20. Talent

"You and I," Faith says, "We've got a real talent for being Slayers."

21. Silence

Buffy doesn't say a word, because she thinks it's not the Slayer that she wants to be now, it's the girl, and she's worried that she's forgotten how to do that too.

22. Journey

She takes the plane back to America and back to the things that are familiar, that she hopes will put her back together again.

23. Fire

She's forgotten what it was like to just feel warm; now the fire either freezes her, or it threatens to consume her entirely (and she tries to ignore the whisper that says maybe, just maybe, she wants to burn).

24. Strength

She's not allowed time to fail; she's the hero, their solid, their constant, and she has to be strong even when she's terrified that she's forgetting how to, or that she's forgetting how to be anything else.

25. Mask

In the end, she wears the lies again because there's nothing else she can do when they expect her to be fixed in one single grand finale.

26. Ice

She doesn't want to be cold and hard anymore, with the weight of her broken promises to Dawn resting heavy on her shoulders like concrete wings.

27. Fall

When the phone rings and she picks it up to hear Faith's voice, Buffy thinks that maybe it's not falling, maybe it's just stepping down off of her damned pedestal.

28. Forgotten

She's forgotten so much but, packing her bag and trying to explain to Willow without explaining too much, she thinks that maybe eventually she'll learn how to remember and not regret.

29. Dance

Half the men in the bar are staring at them and Buffy wants to laugh with the wild, giddy freedom of it.

30. Body

Faith presses her up against the wall, her body pinning Buffy's in place as she slides warm (/warm/) hands up under Buffy's shirt and unerringly finds all the ticklish places on Buffy's ribcage until Buffy begs for mercy against the curve of Faith's neck.

31. Sacred

Faith knows better than to treat Buffy like something sacred.

32. Farewells

"Whenever you leave," Willow says over the phone, the line so bad that Buffy can hardly hear her, "it always feels like goodbye. I miss you, Buffy."

33. World

_I want to show you the world_, she told Dawn, but Buffy knows now that she has to find the world for herself first.

34. Formal

Their relationship- if it is that- is a casual arrangement; formality, Faith knows, will only lead to one of them getting hurt.

35. Fever

Faith's skin is sweaty and hot and although she feels guilty for it, a part of Buffy is revolted to touch her.

36. Laugh

"Be honest, now. Did you ever think we would end up screwing?" Faith asks her, and Buffy laughs, "No," she admits, "it never even crossed my mind."

37. Lies

She's lying, of course; it did cross her mind once, but then Faith killed a man and everything changed.

38. Forever

Buffy says, "This isn't a forever kind of thing, is it?" and Faith agrees easily enough: "Just a one-time situation."

39. Overwhelmed

When she hears that Angel's working for Wolfram and Hart now, and Spike's somehow back from the dead and working with him, Buffy tries her best not to feel betrayed but her heart is treacherous, just like him.

40. Whisper

"I hate it so much sometimes," Buffy confesses against Faith's shoulder, her eyes squeezed shut to keep the tears in, "I hate that everything's become shades of grey, even me."

41. Wait

Faith waits until Buffy's stopped crying, even though it wasn't proper crying, and then she says, "Onlycrazy people see things in black and white."

42. Talk.

Sometimes they don't talk at all, they just lie there without touching, breathing in the relief of having someone else to share the cold and lonely hours of the night with.

43. Search

"You know," Faith says easily, "You don't love me. You're just looking for something that you haven't found yet. That's cool."

44. Hope

"I keep hoping that maybe one day I'll wake up and I'll be more than just a Slayer," Buffy says, "and then sometimes I worry that maybe I already have, and that this is it."

45. Eclipse

Faith smokes and watches as the sun disappears in the sky, and she wonders if this is the end of the world.

46. Gravity

"He's okay," Buffy says, and Faith knows that this is how it feels to come back down to earth.

47. Highway

She drives Buffy to the airport and they listen to Jimi Hendrix because Faith likes him and because his voice fills the spaces that theirs don't.

48. Unknown

"I don't know if I'll stay," Buffy says quietly, meeting Faith's eyes with something like her old steel, "but I still have to see him."

49. Lock

Love is a word that they've never spoken and that has no power between them; Faith knows better than to try to keep Buffy here with it.

50. Breathe

Buffy kisses her on the cheek, her breath warm and chaste, and Faith knows that things will never be this easy between them again.


End file.
